The Message: My brother brought me back to my faith

My Brother Marc...

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, two fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” -Hebrews 12:1-2

In 1971, I was 17 and my brother Marc was 9. That would be the year that our father would die in the spring, and life would appear to unravel that summer and fall.

At 17 it was my senior year of high school, and before dad passed, I had a scholarship for Navy ROTC to Penn State. When dad passed on May 5, before we graduated, my grandfather, who I loved, sat me down for a talk and shared his thoughts. Because I was the oldest and Marc and our sister Lisa (who was 10) would still be at home to raise and Mom would have no help, Grandpa thought it would be best if I would give up the scholarship and stay home to help Mom and to choose a local teacher’s college instead.

I did so with a heavy heart, a yet young and selfish heart. With nowhere I thought I could take my grief, I began a stretch of 20 years of being angry and shutting God out of my life. Because after all, he must have been responsible for all of this.

He was, I know now, but for his reasons, not mine. The last night of dad’s life, he sat up in his bed for the first time in weeks and said, “I hear the angels singing.” Those would be the last words I’d ever hear him say.

When I got back from school the next afternoon, he had passed. And for 20 years, I never realized that what he had said that last night was God’s gift to me -- that dad was going home and would be well forever.

In 1972 I was 18, and my draft number was 26. In an odd way, the war in Vietnam and three years in the Army grounded me and gave me direction.

My brother, through those years, got into lots of trouble. By the time he was 15, he was stealing cars, doing drugs and a handful for our mom. That’s when providence interrupted our lives again. Mark had to go to the doctor for a hernia, and they discovered that he had cystic fibrosis. Like the Army for me, that journey for Marc led him to the God who is there. The God who loves us so much that he gave himself for each of us. The God who intercedes in our lives at just the right times, to lead us homeward, chapter by chapter.

In Marc’s search for answers, he found that loving savior God at a little Baptist church in New Jersey. His 17-year journey with cystic fibrosis would become a testimony to his faith in the God who loves us all.

On a day in 1991, Marc still serving the Lord as frail as he was then, I was still angry from such a long time ago. Dorie, Marc's wife, called to tell me that Marc was in the hospital and not expected to live. Mom and Lisa and I got in the car in New Jersey and drove to the hospital in Harrisburg Pa. When we got there, we found Marc so much frailer and thinner than ever we had seen him. Mom and Lisa went with Dorie to have coffee and support her. I sat with Marc to console him.

However, it would end up being the total opposite. As Marc asked me to please watch over his wife and our mom when he no longer could, I told him not to worry, that one day we would all be together again.

It was then that Marc looked me straight in the eye, as tears welded up, and he said with all sincerity and sorrow, “That’s not possible, Scott, because you don’t know my father!” Falling asleep with his tears for me, I prayed for the first time in 20 years to a God I wasn’t even sure was there, to share what was left of my life with my brother.

Marc lived another three years after that day, and would share his faith with me every chance he had. On more than one occasion, he told me that “he was sure that God had allowed his illness to save his soul.”

And so, on the day of his celebration of life, once he was home with our dad, the Lord moved in my heart and shared what was left of my brother’s life with me. That summer, with the consent of my wife and children, we applied for seminary. We were accepted in January 1995 and have served the Lord of both my father and my brother all these years since. The same God and father who had the angels sing to my dad on that night so long ago, so that I would hear, too.

All in all, the story of my dad’s life, the story of my brother’s life, the story of my sister Lisa’s life (who died last summer after a four-year journey with cancer), and the story of my life are best summed up by what my mom says in moments of trial and searching.

“It is what it is and God is good and there is no comma.”

Because whatever we are going through at any given time, God is writing the story of each of our lives. And Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of faith," is writing each chapter of our lives. He does so because he so loves us ... forever!

Pastor Scott Dempster is pastor for Bread of Life Ministries and Chaplain for Jenkins Living Center.

This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: Scott Dempster's led him back to Christianity, faith, God